


Broken Fantasy

by orphan_account



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Break Up Talk, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 18:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18255101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Felicity Smoak has a realization during her mother's speech about Noah in 4x14 and makes a mature decision instead of holding onto a fantasy.Posterity Fic from my Revenant-Commander days.





	Broken Fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Nope. I do not own Arrow.
> 
> A/N: This was written in honor of Valentine’s Day during S4 and was one of the rare times I had Felicity in a semi-decent light. I found it very ironic that she ended up breaking up with him, in a more immature fashion, by the end of the very next episode.

 

Felicity Smoak was known for several things, most recently being the CEO of Palmer Tech and being paralyzed from the waist down due to an attack on her fiancé by the Ghosts controlled by Damien Darhk. She was also known for having a tumultuous relationship with her mother, and thinking things to death when she didn’t let herself get caught up in the moment. Unfortunately, those last two elements had just come into play, in that she remembered something her mother had told her recently. Though Donna Smoak had been speaking of Noah Kuttler, Felicity’s father who just happened to be her own latest nemesis in the form of the Calculator (the post having been previously filled by the Clock King), the words she had spoken had been haunting Felicity every waking moment since they had finished the business with the League of Assassins, Malcolm Merlyn, and her own father. Those words? “People don’t change, no matter how much you want them to.”

Now, Felicity had kept telling herself that she knew these words weren’t exactly true; after all, Oliver had changed who he was, left the crusade he had started behind to start a life with her and let the team they left behind handle things. But she hadn’t changed much herself, not at her core; she had helped the team behind Oliver’s back, registering deep down that he was (and in some ways still remained) in denial of what he really wanted. She knew that it was this reason, and not any other, that kept him from being angry at her when he finally realized that she had been helping the team. He had been so accepting of what she had done that she hadn’t stopped to think why. She wondered if Oliver himself even knew, or if he was still trying to live in denial in some ways.

That led to the other problem, really: she had known Oliver long enough to know when he was keeping something from her. He had been doing so for a while now, ever since their visit to Central City to help Kendra and Carter. Oliver had spent some time talking with Barry and then gone off on his own, though he hadn’t told anyone what he was doing. Felicity would have confronted Barry, but she knew the man was very loyal to Oliver, whom he saw as both a friend and a kind of mentor. It would take it being just the right moment for her to get Barry to tell her what was going on, like catching him red-handed with something, and by this point that was far from being a reality.

There was also the fact that Oliver had deftly sidestepped her question in the hospital; morphine drip or no, Felicity had noticed it when he hadn’t answered her question about whether he’d gone off the rails. She knew he was smart enough to know he wasn’t just talking about killing; the torturing and using criminals to do his dirty work were as much an aspect of his darkness as killing people was.

Felicity glanced down at the ring on her finger, glinting in the light in the apartment. The ring itself had been Moira Queen’s, a woman who Felicity had had no respect for, whom she had found diabolical at best, and an evil hell-bitch at worst. The latter coming into play when Moira had used her feelings for Oliver against her, to try and keep her quiet about Thea’s parentage. Felicity had taken a gamble, mainly because when Oliver said her name in the way he had, looked at her in concern, she had never really been able to lie to him. Not like he had been able to lie to her; lie like his mother.

That was the crux of the matter, Felicity realized; no matter what, no matter how much she tried to show Oliver a different path, he was still very much his mother’s son, so caught up in lies and secrets that he probably didn’t even know when he was lying to people. She knew he could be a better man, had seen glimpses of the man inside him, but something was keeping him from being completely honest with her, and she wondered how he could do that when he knew how well that had gone with all of his other relationships since becoming an adult. Laurel, Sara, Helena, Laurel again, Sara again, and now she was being added to that list. Well, she refused to be on it!

When Oliver came through the door hours later, Felicity was waiting for him by the window. “Hey,” he said, coming up to her as she turned her chair around to face him. “Laurel told me you wanted to talk? Why didn’t you just text me?”

“It was a subtle message,” Felicity told him, and then pointed to the couch.

Oliver sat, even as he said, “I feel like the kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, or maybe like getting called to the principal’s office.”

“Oliver, we need to talk,” Felicity told him. “I know you’re hiding something from me. I don’t know why, and I honestly don’t know if I can bring myself to care why. When I told Mom about my father showing up, she told me something, and I tried my best to _not_ let it interfere with our relationship, with the image of you I have. But it did.”

“What did she tell you?” Oliver asked, allowing the smile and joking tone to fade.

“That people don’t change, no matter how much we want them to,” Felicity said. “And no matter how much I’ve tried to ignore it, I can’t; I can’t ignore that you are still very much the son of the woman who last wore this ring, someone so caught up in secrets and lies that she probably didn’t know when she was telling the truth. You are _exactly_ the same, as much I never wanted to admit it. But the worst thing is, you lie to yourself and make yourself believe it. I may not know who you are in your bones like Laurel, but I know you can’t have ignored what was happening in Star City while we were off on our world tour. I know you knew what was happening, but turned away because you had lied to yourself; lied that the team could handle it, that you could have that normal life we both wanted those first few weeks. You sidestepped my question in the hospital, and then just this past week I saw you once again protect Malcolm Merlyn from what he had coming. How can you not think that won’t come back to burn you? Malcolm has intimate knowledge of our team, of everyone we care about, and you don’t think he won’t make good on his threat?” Seeing Oliver’s look of surprise, Felicity let out a small, but humorless, laugh. “Yeah, Oliver, Laurel told me. Because as much as you’d probably like to think, not all of your exes hate each other and we do talk. Laurel told me about Malcolm’s threat because she was worried what might happen. You, you’re ignoring the threat he poses because he’s Thea’s father. Or is it because, in some twisted way, its _you_ who sees him as a father, just as he considered you a son?”

Oliver rocked back in shock at everything Felicity had just unloaded on him; the worst part being, he could not refute a single thing she had said. He had known what was going on, but he wanted to believe he could have the normal life he had tried to have with Felicity during the past summer. He was lying to her about something big; he had sidestepped the question she asked him in the hospital, the one about going off the rails, and he had protected Malcolm, but also betrayed him, leaving the man vengeful if his words were anything to go by. Did he ignore the threat Malcolm poses because of him being Thea’s father, or was Felicity’s accusation right? Did he, in some twisted way, see Malcolm as a father figure?

Then a small, but salient point from Felicity’s speech came back to hit him square in the face. “Exes?” he asked, looking to her. “Sounds like you’ve made a decision.”

“I have,” Felicity said quietly. She pulled off the ring and held it out to him. “I will remain by your side and support your campaign, Oliver, but I am _not_ going to be with someone who doesn’t trust me, who finds honesty to be so difficult and prefers lies and secrets to being up front with the people he cares about. Palmer Tech has some old apartments from their days as Queen Consolidated, used for putting up visiting investors. I’ll be staying there.”

As she said this, a knock sounded at the door and, at Felicity’s call, the person on the other side entered. “You asked for a car, Ms. Smoak?” the man who entered said, dressed in a chauffer’s outfit.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, giving the man a small smile. “My bags are right there,” she added, pointing to the bags that her mother had helped her pack earlier in the day that were situated behind the door. Oliver had missed them since his attention had been focused on Felicity.

The chauffer grabbed the bags obligingly and left the apartment, knowing better than anyone that being around a couple who were breaking up was not a good idea.

“I hope that one day, you can trust me enough that you would be able to talk to me openly,” Felicity told him quietly. “But don’t wait around forever to be that person, Oliver. Because I’m done waiting for you to be open with me.” With that, Felicity wheeled herself out of the apartment, stopping only to grab her purse.

Oliver was left to ponder what she had said, while Felicity, once ensconced in the apartment she had had cleaned up for her and her mother, who was staying with her to help her deal with the break-up, had allowed herself to crumble from the strong persona she had projected during the meeting with Oliver. Donna, arriving soon after, helped soothe her daughter, never knowing that part of the reason for the tears was that Felicity had realized her own hubris in this situation: she had idealized Oliver and held him up to be this hero, like the kind that would take on groo’s and the like in Zork. Her mother’s words, however true, had broken the fantasy Felicity had built for herself, and in some ways, had broken the fantasy Oliver himself had built in his own mind.

Whether Felicity and Oliver would regain their trust and become a couple once again was unknown, but what was certain was that there was no more idealization from anyone, and whomever they ended up with, the relationship would be based in realism.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So I left it open-ended there for those who want Olicity to happen, as well as those who want Lauriver, Canarrow, or Oliver just being a playboy again until much later in life (as I understand it, in the comics he rarely gets married prior to age 40).


End file.
